Basically he says if they raise taxes,the system will waste it and flush it down the toilet.It’s like giving twenty dollars to a drunk,he’ll just buy more booze.
Anyone who grew up in the working-class America of the
60s or 70s knows that.

Anyone who understands the principle of osmosis, or thermodynamics — and I mean understands them, and not just mouths the words, like a lot of so called “engineers” that I know — will agree with Mr. Epstein.

I loved his quoting Lincoln: “You don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor.” That’s gotta burn when they pee.

They know this allows them to damage Christian reputation. Which their religion is sorta all good for. Infiltrate and indoctrinate. First step in removing the power of a culture or religion is getting it to (in)voluntarily remove it’s symbols.

[…] the rage right now). Interestingly enough, this interview was conducted and broadcast by PBS (as tree hugging sister notes “I’m sure whoever’s idea it was has been sacked. Along with all the llama […]

Notice how the commentator says ‘that was “libertarian” economist’? See if he attaches a label to any other economist. Epstein must be labeled and dismissed Notice also how incited the interview is?
Household income…what about the increase is single parent households? Does that change the interpretation of this data?

Mr. Epstein must not have noticed the massive financial illiquidity that struck in 2008 despite (maybe because of?) the financial market free-for-all we’d experienced for the previous decade. Or that people losing hope because they have fallen so far behind aren’t incentivized. Or that his claim that he can harmlessly bequeath untaxed wealth to his children while those less prudent (like a Pell grand recipient) will be disincentivized is hopelessly arrogant….or that…a millionaire taxed at a slightly higher rate is still a millionaire. What balderdash!

Dear Jeffs: No, it won’t burn when they pee because Lincoln never said anything like what Epstein said. This was a bad blot on an otherwise splendid performance. But dam Epstein for sending that Lincoln lie out to gain fresh roots.

A couple points. First, the top 1% now are not the same people they were 30 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Second, one of the reasons that high income households have more income is that they’re larger, and have more than one person working. Third, they work more. If people in the bottom fifth worked as many hours as those in the top fifth, they’d be making about 50% more.

“You don’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor” is about as asinine a statement as I ever heard. No thinking man would utter such nonsense. The rich would not get poor by having their taxes slightly, and I say slightly, raised and this would never make the poor rich. Epstein fell in love with a catchy, if empty slogan.

Almost certainly this interview was Paul Solman’s idea. He’s been giving the nose-tweak to slave market economics and soap boxes on PBS to free market economists like Richard Epstein and Milton Friedman for decades.

By now they have seen this interview and have witnessed the betrayal of their beloved PBS as the rock-solid crypto-leftist advocacy arm which has enabled and supported them for decades. They know that 8 unvarnished minutes of Richard Epstein on the News Hour portends the death of PBS as the liberal-left’s secret Garden of Eden; where those collectivist ideologues who wanted to earn handsome livings without having to moderate, or even defend, their leftward biases in a clubby, warm atmosphere without too many scary black men or those hillbilly Christians, might spend their entire careers untroubled by intellectual or political competition.

It is a sad thing indeed to behold these avatars of the left as they come to realize that if messages like Epstein’s can get out over PBS, it means that the comfy, warm ideological hothouse that was PBS is no more; and that they are being turned out into a cold marketplace of ideas where not everyone thinks Obama is the Neo who was foretold in the films of ancient legend; where they will be called on to explain and even defend their positions; where their every assertion is not presumed to be pristine truth; where not their salaries aren’t guaranteed; and where they will daily be in…in…competition!

I agree with Epstein on everything of substance that he says here. However, it was not Lincoln who said, “you can’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor.” It was the Reverend William John Henry Boetcker (1873–1962) who wrote “you cannot help the poor by destroying the rich” and 9 other related aphorisms in 1916. A printing error in 1942 led to the confusion between some Lincoln quotes and these Boetcker quotes. See http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln/prosperity.asp

[…] There are many reasons that the liberal meme about the unfairness of income inequality is misleading. Still, there is income inequality, and one of the largest causes of income inequality is the difference in rewards to those trained in technologies and those not. See this graphic of the difference in pay among those in hi-tech jobs and those in service jobs. Those with technical skills, also, go on to build successful businesses of their own and get wealthier. As the CBO report on income inequality points out, an increased proportion of the wealthier are those applying skills rather than clipping coupons or withdrawals from trust funds. This News Hour interview nails it. […]

Epstein is what passes for a Right wing intellectual these days: tell, tell, tell and never show. (Thomas Flathead Friedman would be the equivalent on the left?) Neither he nor anyone else has any data to back up their opinions. If you RW blowhard commentators above actually listened to what he said (instead of wanking yourself to Epstein as you do in writing above) you would realise how he constantly obfuscates issues, comes up with non-sequitors and answers questions by just repeating himself or stating some new opinion.

Is Richard Epstein advocating a return the 17th c with Absolutist primces governing serfs? Does he know anything about the French Revolution? As an academic, I find it hard to believe that he holds a teaching position. Why was he featured of PBS?

The well-publicized income gap in America is a lie because the government does not include welfar handouts and transfer payments in income computation. Hence, a poor person making $30,000 and also receiving $50,000 per year worth of free foodstamps, free healthcard, free or subsidized rent, and other cash benefits is actually earning well over $100,000 on a tax-adjusted basis. This is why the average poor person in America owns a car, has air conditioning, an smartphone and a wide-screen TV. The govt. is lying about the true income of poor folks. America is now a loafer’s paradise.

I love this little satirical piece written by CS Lewis in 1959 for the Saturday Evening Post. It talks a great deal about equality and inequality, democracy.. even state education. The interesting parts start around the twentieth paragraph.

That PBS chose to interview Richard Epstein and give him time to respond to a range of questions is precisely the reason PBS should be supported.
Sadly many of the comments suggest that the listener is unable to do their own analysis Mr. Epstein’s position.